In the coming months the Democrats will battle fiercely over
policy, perspectives, and personalities as they try to understand and place
blame for their debacle in the 2004 presidential and congressional elections.
In fact, pre-election Democratic Party unity is unraveling as the war of words
has commenced and the fight for party leadership has begun.

This development is not at all
surprising. Organizations tend to follow certain predictable patterns of
behavior. Groups that are in competition with one another will close ranks and
submerge differences to achieve victory. Each group’s members will demonstrate
loyalty and conformity, even as the leadership becomes more autocratic. For
proof, consider the trajectory of the Democratic
primaries, where a snarling Howard Dean morphed into John Kerry’s puppy.

Any organization that suffers a
setback or loss tends to turn in on itself to find some one or some reason to
explain the defeat. In 2000 the Democrats were spared this painful process by
venting their fury on the convenient target of Ralph Nader and the Greens.Normally, though, a losing group will fight,
factionalize, and fracture. Failure finds blame — or blame follows failure.

This phenomenon unfolds every Thursday
night on television’s “The Apprentice.” The losing group backstabs each other
until, before 17 million viewers, Donald Trump grandly announces to that week’s
scapegoat: “You’re fired!”

But what happens to the Democrats
when America
itself “fires” the party’s presidential nominee? John Kerry personally retains
his Senate seat, of course, but what will be the fate of the Democratic Party?

Past experience says the Democrats
will turn inwards. Left, center, and right will battle each other in a dispute
as ugly as any family quarrel can be. Ultimately, a victor will emerge from
this dogfight; unity will be proclaimed once more, and in 2007–2008 the dance
of the two parties will commence yet again.

And once again, as in 2003–2004, all
of the progressive movements for social change will come under enormous
pressure to put aside political principles for “practical” politics and back
the Democratic presidential nominee. It would be the wrong decision.

Whether the Democrats put forward a
conservative, moderate, or liberal candidate will make no real difference to
the working class. No matter which wing of the Democrats gets the upper hand in
the party, the Democrats will never become a champion for the real needs of
exploited workers and oppressed people. Despite the misplaced trust many
progressives place in the Democrats, this party will continue to be a champion
of big business, racism, and war.

The Democratic National Committee
will meet in February 2005 to select a new national chairman. This decision,
likely to be contentious and bitter, will signal the future direction of the
party. No wonder, then, that liberal Democrats describe this vote as a life and
death battle for the soul of the party. Democrats, in other words, will soon
begin their own sacrifice to the gods in the hope of good harvests for 2006 and
2008.

For Peter Beinart, writing in The
New Republic (Nov. 22, 2004), the duel of left versus right has not begun
soon enough. Beinart suggests that the fundamental similarities among all
Democrats prevent lively ideological debate, but he finds the party worse off for
it. His recommendation? A leap to the right: “The
Democrats need an ideological shift on foreign policy akin to the domestic
policy shift ushered in by Bill Clinton. When that shift begins, division will
replace unity and the bloodletting will begin. It can’t start a moment too
soon.”

A favorable reference to Clinton’s “domestic policy
shift” is a codeword for the abandonment in practice of any liberal foreign
policies in favor of conservative ones.Clinton, after all,
created a tax policy to favor the wealthy and gave tax hikes to the working
class while gutting social programs, including welfare. He signed the Defense of Marriage Act,
supported the death penalty, and the anti-labor free trade agreements favored
by big business. He also presided
over U.S. military
intervention in Bosnia,
Kosovo, and Haiti, bombed Sudan and Afghanistan,
and kept Iraq
under pressure with economic sanctions and military attacks that cost more than
a million Iraqi lives over most of a decade.

Many Democrats speak out bluntly
for more ofa swing to the right. For instance, Dan Gerstein, a consultant and
strategist for Senator Joe Lieberman, faulted his fellow Democrats for “too
often kowtowing to the antiwar wing of the party” and “showing unease with the
use of [military] force.” He argues that “Democrats have to break out of our
stale political grooves,” which “means declaring our independence from the
sclerotic influence of progress-blocking interest groups like the teachers
unions—and being willing, as Bill Clinton was, to challenge outdated party
orthodoxies” (The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 11, 2004).

But exactly what orthodoxies and liberal
policies do the Democrats have left to abandon?They support not only the Iraq
war but the underlying idea of the “Bush doctrine,” that the United States has the right to
intervene militarily anywhere in the world any time the American ruling class
demands it. Democrats and Republicans differed only on the most effective means
of mobilizing domestic and foreign support.

What does the future hold in store
for the liberal-lefts and progressives? Certainly the Republican social agenda
will be disastrous for the working class, minorities, the disenfranchised,
women, and the gay community. The cover of the Nov. 22 issue of “The Nation”
shows storm clouds covering the sun and the words “Four More Years” spelled out
in blood-red letters. Even a NewRepublic editorial
forecasts: “Hard times, brutish times, lie ahead” (Nov. 15, 2004).

Had Kerry been elected, a movement
in opposition to his policies inevitably would have developed. A militant,
independent, left-wing sentiment, open to radical and socialist ideas, would
have grown substantially. No doubt many activists would have been siphoned off
into some campaign for a more liberal Democrat. But some others would have
learned from their own experience to reject the Democrats entirely and would
have begun looking for an alternative, a more effective means of changing the
world for the better.

Now, since Bush’s election, Republican
control of the White House and Congress will sustain the mistaken belief in the
Democrats as the party, or, as Ralph Nader hopes, the potential party of
opposition. (In a press release after the election, Nader urged the Democrats
to “become as tough an opposition party as the forthcoming Republican efforts
to crush them and stand up for peace and justice at home and abroad”).

The Democrats will exploit and benefit
from the anger and outrage likely to follow in the wake of the Republican
victories in Congress and the White House. The “throw-the-bums-out” sentiment,
a hallmark of the two-party shell game, will swing in favor of the major party
that lost the presidential election in 2004.

The powerful “Anybody-but-Bush”
groundswell will reawaken as an “Anybody-but-Republicans” movement. The fear of
a third party, reflected in the mere 400,000 votes for the Nader/Camejo
campaign of 2004 compared to the three million votes for Nader/LaDuke in 2000, will
only intensify and harden. In the name of “realism,” progressives will continue
to shackle themselves to the Democratic Party.

The chains are being forged
already. With blustery rhetoric MoveOn, described by the Associated Press as a
“liberal powerhouse,” is stirring its supporters. An email from MoveOn’s
political action committee said, “For years, the party has been led by elite Washington insiders who
are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base…But we
can’t afford four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional
election losers.” The message continued, “Now it’s our party: we bought it, we
own it, and we’re going to take it back.”

Robert Borosage, co-director of the
Campaign for America’s
Future, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of “The Nation,” also try to rally
the troops for a fresh assault to capture the Democratic Party leadership: “Progressives
drive this party now—we provide the energy, the organizers, the ground forces,
the ideas and much of the money. We should organize the opposition…We win by
being the party of progress, not by blurring differences with the new
reactionaries” (“Progressives: Get Ready to Fight,” in The Nation, Nov.
29, 2004).

Of course, the Democrats have
never, and are not likely now, to seek advice from “The Nation.” And while it
may be true that progressive activists form the backbone of the party, these
activists do not make the fundamental decisions. The Democratic Party is not
democratic, and its leadership bodies are not accountable to the members. Party
leaders and officeholders are tied to their corporate masters, who donate
millions to their chosen candidates’ campaigns and who expect a good return on
their investment.

Some third party formations have
already indicated a willingness to surrender. The Green Party, whose 2004
candidate, David Cobb, barely registered in the national elections, will likely
focus on local electoral contests and cede the presidential ground to the
Democrats.Medea Benjamin, Green Party
candidate for senator in California
in 2000, explained in a recent interview, “The whole Presidential campaign has
been devastating for the Greens…Presidential elections are not where Greens can
have an impact now” (The Progressive, December 2004).

Benjamin does not call for a
political break with the Democrats—far from it. “Dems, Greens and other
progressives must not only respect one another’s choices, we must start using
these different ‘inside-outside’ strategies to our collective advantage. A strategically placed Green/progressive pull could conceivably
prevent a suicidal Democratic lurch to the right” (The Nation, December
20, 2004).

Progressive wishful thinking aside,
with little immediate opposition of any consequence, the twin parties of
corporations and capitalism are likely to grow even closer, though never
melding into one. The Democrats may not regain power, but, despite dire pundit
predictions, the Democrats will not commit suicide or disappear. The fighting
over differences between Democrats and Republicans is a necessary part of the
way the American ruling class airs and resolves its conflicts. The Democrats
will continue to function as a “safety valve” for popular protest, a vehicle to
absorb and demobilize the mass movements that can be expected to arise in the
future. As Malcolm X once pointed out, “the shrewd capitalists, the shrewd
imperialists knew that the only way people would run toward the fox would be if
you showed them a wolf.”

Socialists understand this reality
quite well. More than ninety years ago, the founder of the Bolshevik party
outlined the political framework that exists today: “People always have been
the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they
always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious,
political and social phrases, declarations and promises. Champions of reforms
and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until
they realize that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten it may
appear to be, is kept going by the forces of certain ruling classes. And there
is only one way of smashing the
resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in the very society which
surrounds us, the forces which can—and, owing to their social position, must—constitute the power capable of
sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organize those
forces for the struggle” (V.I. Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component
Parts of Marxism).

Socialists, then, will continue to
raise the real alternative, the class alternative. The future will require no
less. The struggle against the Iraq
war, a consequence of Republican and Democratic policies, will continue. As their
rights are threatened, women and African-Americans will look for ways to speak
up and fight back. Civil liberties will continue to be threatened, and
defended. As historian Howard Zinn often says, “More important than who sits in
the White House is who sits outside it.”

Through newspapers, forums, and
other means, socialists will participate in all of the social and political
struggles to come and will help build the protest movements that are active
today. Such efforts will lay the basis for electoral campaigns independent of
the twin capitalist parties by building a party of the working class.